Sunday, May 11, 2008

Bagalicious Bag Swap

Recently I joined in with a group of online friends for a secret bag swap. The rules were pretty simple - make a bag and gift it to your swappee in secret. The fun is in seeing the bags everyone receives and having a guess at who sent you yours.

So...my swappee (I am pretty sure they don't read here..and besides its going to be dead easy to pick me out anyway) asked for a knitted bag or a cellphone/ipod cozy. So here's what I made

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A little knitted drawstring pouch. Hopefully this will useful for her ipod or other little things. I filled it with yummy treats. This is from Last Minute Knitted Gifts, a book I have had for awhile now but haven't actually made anything from yet. I really love this design. Very quick and simple and yet such a nice result. This would make gorgeous gift wrapping for baby items too. I had a little under one ball of yarn so mine is slightly smaller than the pattern but very cutie cutie. I learnt how to do a three needle bind off for the bottom of the bag.

Does anyone else get all worried and scared by knitting terms like Three Needle Bind Off? Or is it just me who thinks these sorts of things are going to be so difficult just because they are unknown? I really need to get over this I think. The BO was dead simple. One thing I really like about knitting is to learn a new technique which is sort of at odds with my sometimes fear of patterns containing terms I don't recognize. Maybe I just need to give myself more credit and get over it.


Anyway moving right along...I also made her a cellphone cozy using the double knitting technique I described here. I made a little flap and fastened with a button and finished it off with some daisy embroidery. The photos arent the best because I was already running late with sending these off so I just did them quickly...in full sun....not a good plan apparently. Anyway you will get the idea.

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I didn't think the 2 wee bags were quite enough so I also made a cotton/bamboo dishcloth to add to the parcel. I've been thinking about making this sweater for myself (one day...sometime... not soon) and so tried the feather&fan lace pattern out for this cloth to see if I could handle a whole sweater's worth of that pattern.


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Very cool. I love how it came out with this yarn (Moda Vera Bamboo/Cotton) and the pattern is not at all hard. Its a 4 row repeat but you actually only do the pattern of K2tog and YO one of those rows.

Fingers crossed my person likes their bags!


As for me...I am totally stoked with the bags I received!!!

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A print PUL wetbag (PUL is the waterproof stuff modern nappies are made out of) which is going to be super handy for the DD's. I am thinking nappy wet bag, tog bag, cutlery bag for camp etc etc. Useful and gorgeous! My kind of bag. And bestest of all was a super WiP bag for my knitting...

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When I told DH it was for keeping my knitting tidy his eyes lit up! I am so bad for leaving darning needles stuck in the lounge suite and knitting needles and yarn all over the place. This is the perfect bag for keeping it all together. The colours are so me, I really love it. The lovely Claire at Wigglebums made this for me. I love it so so much. Thanks C!

If bags are your thing then check out the cool bag Kimber made for Nikki and the messenger style bag Nikki made. Flea got a gorgeous beaded bag and she made a very funky patchwork one

4 comments:

Sharonnz said...

LOVE your Last-Minute projects...cute!

Sue said...

I too am guilty of having that same book and not knitting anything from it as yet. Your bag and i-pod cozy look great. The bags you received were very nice too, and the dishcloth looks great. Nice to know that the feather and fan pattern isnt that hard to knit up.

Gypsy said...

Wow your projects are great Gabes ... I am so impressed. I am still working on my pom pom chick - next stop is my first dishcloth :)-

So looking at stuff like this is kind of gazing up at superstars

Anonymous said...

Glad you like the bags, had lots of fun making them.